Well, a biiiig box came in yesterday, with an HP3585A with a reference problem ($390), and a Tek SD-24 dual 20 GHz TDR plugin ($102.50).
The 3585A will need an afternoon's worth of troubleshooting, but it looks basically functional. The SD-24 works perfectly right out of the box.
And they're both tax-deductible. It's nice when your work is also your hobby. ;)
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 160 North State Road #203 Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 845-480-2058 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
Sweet!
I've got an ancient Tektronix 213 osc/dmm with a dead battery. Tektronix no longer even acknowledges it, but I've found a DVD service manual and a couple places claiming to supply replacement batteries. We'll see.
It's still my hobby, but am retired and hoping to realize some $$, eventually. Gotta couple ideas. ;)
nb
-- vi --the heart of evil!
That one's a bit over the hill for me, sort of like lovingly restoring a Hillman Minx. ;)
Another eBay find committed harakiri yesterday--a Krohn-Hite 3202R dual lowpass filter. One of the PS filter cap cans was a bit loose in its clamp, and jiggled down till it finally touched the (uninsulated) bottom cover, resulting in clouds of transformer smoke. :(
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 160 North State Road #203 Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 845-480-2058 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
That's about 10% of the going price. SD24 is a wonderful gadget: 20 GHz sampler, TDR, TDT, pulse generator. It's even better with a sampling head extender, which are expensive and rare.
Yup, approximating a 50% discount.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology Inc www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom timing and laser controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators
I got one of the 2-metre extender cables (012-1221-00) for about $80 in the dark days of 2009 when labs were closing and not opening. It runs from the 11802 in the rack to my bench, via a 5-inch C-clamp that I run all off-bench cables through, to avoid mishaps due to snagging a cable.
On precious cables like that one, I also have a loop secured lightly with gaffer's tape to take the mechanical shock, if any. Unlike its evil twin (duct tape), gaffer's tape doesn't leave gunk behind, and it tears reasonably easily.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 160 North State Road #203 Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 845-480-2058 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
What other heads do you have? SD22 is nice, 12 GHz and low noise, and they are relatively cheap. There are some good o/e converters around, too, that plug into the head slots.
So far, the 11801s and heads seem to keep getting cheaper. They work great and seem to be pretty reliable.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology Inc www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom timing and laser controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators
I have:
11802 mainframe (only 900ish hours--a gem!) 2x SD-42 6.4 GHz OE converters 2x SD-14 3 GHz dual FET probe (One is mildly broken) 2x SD-22 12.5 GHz dual low noise head 2x SD-24 20 GHz dual TDR head 1x 012-1221-00 2m extender cableNext on the list, once my ship comes in, is a faster digitizing scope with a user interface that's not as clunky as the one on my TDS 744A. Hopefully I can find a TDS 694C that I can afford. (Otherwise it'll have to wait till I don't have my income direct-deposited at two universities.)
I just got my instrument control program working--I can now suck traces in from the scope over RS232. A background task is to get the same stuff working over GPIB with a Prologix GPIB-Ethernet card, so I can run the scope from a beach somewhere. ;)
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 160 North State Road #203 Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 845-480-2058 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
Wasn't John working on a USB TDR annex sampling oscilloscope?
From the TDS744A? I'm interested to know how! Do you need to press the 'hardcopy' button first or can it be started from the PC? I use disks but a screendump from my TDS744A fills about 1/4th of a disk so that gets cumbersome quickly :-)
-- Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply indicates you are not using the right tools... nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.) --------------------------------------------------------------
Rob just got the new Rigol 4-channel, 1 GHz scope. It's very cool, and the screen can be used for home theatre. It was about $9K, and comes with the most amazing probe stand sorts of things, which took a while to figure out whet the heck they were.
Hey, I did that once, the serial thing, for jitter analysis.
John
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com http://www.highlandtechnology.com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom laser controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro acquisition and simulation
It's for the 11802 at the moment, but the TDS 744A is next. The RS232 interface for the 1180x is a straight-through 25->9 pin cable, with the scope set for 19200,8,N,1, EOL=LF, flagging off.
The TDS 744A is a D9 male, so it looks like a DTE. If so, it'll need a different cable. The interface isn't that complicated, but I wrote a class library for it so that I can do different stuff. (Instrument control is one place that object-oriented programming makes huge sense.) Maybe if I get motivated over the weekend.
I've been trying to get these silly photodiodes tested since Wednesday, and between pyrotechnics and bit rot, haven't managed it yet.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 160 North State Road #203 Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 845-480-2058 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
I guess a standard null-modem cable will work.
According to the manual the serial port on the TDS500, 600 and 700 series is a serial printer port. Not usefull for remote control. But it would be very nice if I'm wrong about this :-)
-- Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply indicates you are not using the right tools... nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.) --------------------------------------------------------------
Did you do ascii or binary? I did ascii, because it was easier, but it's slow.
This was JAX.EXE, a DOS program, named after a defunct New Orleans beer.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com http://www.highlandtechnology.com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom laser controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro acquisition and simulation
Yup, you're right, which is no doubt why the serial port is a DTE now.
I spent a lot of the weekend writing a GPIB class library, which I'll try out tomorrow sometime. First on the list is making it work with the
11802, whose commands I already have figured out, more or less. Then I'll try doing a SCPI oscilloscope class for the TDSes. I don't know how complete it'll be, but I should be able to suck in TDS 744A traces over Ethernet in a day or two.I've been doing more and more mathematical crunching of scope and spectrum analyzer data lately, so getting this working will be a win.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 160 North State Road #203 Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 845-480-2058 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
reference
The old Jax brewery is still there on Decatur St, and even has the red sign on the side, but it's all yuppified shops and restaurants. I was by there in December.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 160 North State Road #203 Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 845-480-2058 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
reference
Yeah, it's like the Sony Metreon in San Francisco: walk 20 feet inside, look around, flee.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology Inc www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom timing and laser controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators
What kind of GPIB interface are you using? I have been looking into GPIB but it continues to feel cumbersome to me.
I ordered this floppy-to-USB converter:
See how that works :-)
-- Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply indicates you are not using the right tools... nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.) --------------------------------------------------------------
reference
I have a Prologix. It's pretty simple--you just open a socket connection to its IP address and port 1234, and type away.
Mine is one of the older ones, running over a wireless bridge in the lab. Here's a cut'n'paste from putty, running at my desk.
++help The following commands are available: ++addr 0-30 [96-126] -- specify GPIB address ++addr -- query GPIB address ++auto 0|1 -- enable (1) or disable (0) read-after-write ++auto -- query read-after-write setting ++clr -- issue device clear ++eoi 0|1 -- enable (1) or disable (0) EOI with last byte ++eoi -- query eoi setting ++eos 0|1|2|3 -- EOS terminator - 0:CR+LF, 1:CR, 2:LF, 3:None ++eos -- query eos setting ++eot_enable 0|1 -- enable (1) or disable (0) appending eot_char on EOI ++eot_enable -- query eot_enable setting ++eot_char -- specify eot character in decimal ++eot_char -- query eot_char character ++ifc -- issue interface clear ++loc -- set device to local ++mode 0|1 -- set mode - 0:DEVICE, 1:CONTROLLER ++mode -- query current mode ++read [eoi|] -- read until EOI, , or timeout ++read_tmo_ms 1-3000 -- set read timeout in millisec ++read_tmo_ms -- query timeout ++rst -- reset controller ++spoll -- serial poll currently addressed device ++spoll 0-30 [96-126] -- serial poll device at specified address ++srq -- query SRQ status ++status 0-255 -- specify serial poll status byte ++status -- query serial poll status byte ++trg -- issue device trigger ++ver -- query controller version ++help -- display this help ++ver Prologix GPIB-ETHERNET Controller version 01.05.01.00Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 160 North State Road #203 Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 845-480-2058 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
speaking of old HP gear,
you wouldn't happen to know of simple fix for an old 8702D lightwave component analyzer that now boot up with "lost lock check reference level" or something like that. The amount of money Agilent wants to fix it isn't worth it
-Lasse
Do you have the manual? Most of them can be downloaded from agilent.com.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 160 North State Road #203 Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 845-480-2058 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
Thats pretty neat. If its an ethernet socket or COM port its a piece of cake to interface. What I don't like is some kind of API or crappy drivers that mess up Windows.
-- Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply indicates you are not using the right tools... nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.) --------------------------------------------------------------
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